excerpts from the book
Predatory States
Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America
by J. Patrice McSherry
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005, paperback
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During the Cold war, highly politicized and ruthless militaries in Latin America, aided and abetted by Washington, used the methods of terror to wage their anticommunist wars in secrecy. Counterinsurgent forces created a vast parallel infrastructure of clandestine detention centers and killing machinery to avoid national and international law and scrutiny, and utilized disappearance, torture, and assassination to defeat "internal enemies."
... Six military states in South America extended ... parastatal structures and extralegal methods across borders - with a "green light" from the U.S. government - in a transnational repressive program known as Operation Condor (or Plan Condor). The militaries in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay were the key protagonists of Condor, spreading dirty war throughout the region and beyond. For them, the ends justified the means; torture, extrajudicial executions, and abductions were considered legitimate if employed against "subversives." During the Cold War, tens of thousands of Latin American men, women, and children were tortured and murdered as a result of such methods, hundreds of them killed within the framework of Operation Condor.
~snip~
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Operation Condor was a secret intelligence and operations system created in the 1970s through which the South American military states shared intelligence and seized, tortured, and executed political opponents in one another's territory. Inspired by a continental security doctrine that targeted ideological enemies, the military states in the Condor system engaged in terrorist practices to destroy the "subversive threat" from the left and defend "Western, Christian civilization." The Condor apparatus was a secret component of a larger, U.S.-led counterinsurgency strategy to preempt or reverse social movements demanding political or socioeconomic change.
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"Subversives" were defined as those with dangerous ideas that challenged the traditional order, whether they were peaceful dissenters, social activists, or armed revolutionaries.
More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Predatory_States_Condor.html~~~~~Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor, also known as Plan Cóndor, Portuguese: Operação Condor), was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America. The program aimed to eradicate alleged socialist and communist influence and ideas and to control active or potential opposition movements against the participating governments.<1> Due to its clandestine nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation Condor is highly disputed. It is estimated that a minimum of 60,000 deaths can be attributed to Condor,<2> possibly more.<3><4><5> Condor's key members were the governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil. The United States participated in a supervisory capacity, with Ecuador and Peru joining later in more peripheral roles.<6>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor~~~~~
KISSINGER TO ARGENTINES ON DIRTY WAR:
"THE QUICKER YOU SUCCEED THE BETTER"
Newly declassified documents show Secretary of State
gave green light to junta, Contradict official line that
Argentines "heard only what wanted to hear."
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 104
Edited by Carlos Osorio, Assisted by Kathleen Costar
Posted December 4, 2003Washington, D.C., 4 December 2003 - Newly declassified State Department documents obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act show that in October 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and high ranking U.S. officials gave their full support to the Argentine military junta and urged them to hurry up and finish the "dirty war" before the U.S. Congress cut military aid. A post-junta truth commission found that the Argentine military had "disappeared" at least 10,000 Argentines in the so-called "dirty war" against "subversion" and "terrorists" between 1976 and 1983; human rights groups in Argentina put the number at closer to 30,000.
The new documents are two memoranda of conversations (memcons) with the visiting Argentine foreign minister, Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti - one with Kissinger himself on October 7, 1976. At the time, the U.S. Congress was about to approve sanctions against the Argentine regime because of widespread reports of human rights abuses by the junta.
The memcons contradict the official line given by Assistant Secretary of State Harry Shlaudeman in response to complaints from the U.S. ambassador in Buenos Aires that Guzzetti had come back "euphoric" and "convinced that there is no real problem with the USG" over human rights. Schlaudeman cabled, "Guz;etti
heard only what he wanted to hear."
According to the memcon's verbatim transcript, Secretary of State Kissinger interrupted the Foreign Minister's report on the situation in Argentina and said "Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the better… The human rights problem is a growing one. Your Ambassador can apprise you. We want a stable situation. We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help."
More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB104/index.htm
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